So why not take a bold step, and stand with Wikileaks? The world’s largest Internet company taking a clear stand would be huge news, and it’d call the bloviating bluff of all the politicians acting out of fear of embarrassment, or worse. The Wikileaks story may well be, as pointedoutby many, the most important and defining story of the Internet age.

It just might prove to be the smartest PR move Google ever made. (And it could, of course, prove to be the exact opposite). And it looks, so far, like rival Facebook is leaning toward supporting Wikileaks.

After all, tens of millions of Stieg Larsson readers can’t be wrong…and I’m guessing they all see the charges against Assange as driven by more than trumped up sex scandal or politically motivated condemnation. Honestly, Larsson himself could not have written a better potboiler than what’s unfolding before us.

I would assume that is so for the same reason FM would not want to host Wikileaks material – because Google could get into a lot of legal trouble for that. They’re better off indexing, as Marshall points out, rather than hosting it themselves.

In a country where distributing classified government documents is a felony, you’re demanding that a company like Google break the law and support a criminal organization like Wikileaks.

Why?

Instead of giving the world truth and transparency, Julian Assange has provided false information to facilitate his banking activities AND he’s threatened to publish UNredacted documents that may lead to people being harmed or killed if the world doesn’t leave him alone to pursue his made dreams of dictating moral standards to the rest of us.

Google running the world? By information? Come on! Information is just that 3% of the Globe that only gets valuable when context has been preserved. At that is for just a few %. So they miss most of the value.

That is why wikileaks is to much more dangerous for the establishment: they have content + (most of the) context.

I suppose the best reason not to mirror it is because it’s not Google’s job to be hosting content, any type of content. Whenever it plays host to material, it creates a conflict between its role of pointing people to information, a role that also helps keep it safe from the same type of legal debates going on about Wikileaks.

If it takes this step, does it then step up to start hosting the next controversial content that might come under attack? And in doing so, does it then itself become a target?

Besides, it really doesn’t need to do this. Wikileaks is already mirrored in well over 10 different locations. The actual cables that were leaked are out as torrent files where no one can pull them back.

Frankly, what Google really needs to do is simply make it search engine find the damn site better. It’s been at least five days now since the old site went down, but that still ranks tops on Google. Bing had it changed, with some human help but who cares, within a day. “Google, Bing & Searching For The New Wikileaks Website” explains more on that — don’t want to add a link and trip a spam filter.

Having said all this, one interesting thing might be if Google built a dedicated search engine for the material. “Cablesearch” is one that the ECCAR put together, but it doesn’t have the latest cables.

I think individually if we can do something to not support those companies who have caved, we should. for me it was to cancel my paypal account. I just did. I left them this message: Dear Paypal – You should be ashamed for not supporting the principles of free speech that our country was founded upon. I will not give you another dime of my money, and am closing my account. . You were in a position to, and as Americans had the responsibility, to defend the constitution and our flag and the support the principles we all are supposed to stand for, and instead of standing up for those principles you have buckled under fear and cowardice. You have squelched the voices of countless thousands by not allowing people to “speak” with their own money to support freedom of speech. Your actions in regards to WikiLeaks has proven that you have become an instrument of the ever growing menace that our founding fathers warned us against…. a tyrannical government! SHAME ON YOU!

I’m not a lawyer but I don’t think Amazon had a legal leg to stand on. although a European cloud host would probably be OK. On the other hand Google has maintained the legal stance that it’s not responsible for what it shows in it’s results therefore they must show the mirror sites; if they don’t they’ll set a precedent for themselves.

The Big G would have an extremely hard time taking a stance against Wikileaks. Especially in view of this direct quote cited on gawker: “Eric Schmidt suggests you alter your scandalous behavior before you complain about his company invading your privacy.”

I agree with you John, this is Google’s big moment to reclaim their “Do No Evil” mojo, but I suspect it will be “Do what’s best for the shareholders”. Business as usual.